Can a coast-to-coast canal solve Nicaragua’s poverty problem?
Nicaragua is a small country that was praised for eventually signing the Paris climate agreement in October, but has since been criticised for pushing ahead with a planned interoceanic canal, with its uncertain environmental effects. So how does it reconcile these apparently conflicting positions? Nicaragua and Syria were the only two countries not to sign […]
New report sheds light on the murder of Berta Cáceres
Since the murder of Berta Cáceres in March 2016, several more community activists have been killed in Honduras. And little progress has been made in solving Cáceres’s murder. Eight people have been arrested, but court hearings have been postponed several times because of the prosecutors’ failure to produce evidence, ignoring the judge’s deadlines. Data collected from phones and […]
The US is out, Nicaragua’s in
While Donald Trump gives the appearance of wavering over his decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Nicaragua has decided to sign it. It was one of only two countries not to sign in Paris last year; the other was Syria. Nicaragua abstained out of principle: the agreement didn’t go far […]
Global Witness fails to respond to detailed criticisms
Criticism of the organisation Global Witness and the coverage of Nicaragua in its latest report on ‘environmental defenders’ has so far failed to shift its stance, or even to persuade it to look in detail at the arguments. Here are the latest developments. The Two Worlds article published on July 16 was accompanied by emails […]
Is Nicaragua really the world’s ‘most dangerous country’ to be an environmental defender?
Under a picture of the renowned environmentalist Berta Cáceres, murdered in Honduras last year, the Guardian has launched a major and much-needed project looking at worldwide deaths of environmental defenders. It’s doing this in collaboration with Global Witness, which keeps an ongoing register of such assassinations. To do this it needs to make some difficult […]
The discoverer of the New World
A review of ‘The Invention of Nature’ by Andrea Wulf On 16 July 1799 a revolutionary thinker arrived in Latin America. Unlike most Europeans who had preceded him to the continent, he didn’t believe in slavery and he promoted the rights of indigenous people. He saw mining for gold and silver for the exploitation it […]
Remembering Felicita Zeledón: the woman who told the world about the tragedy at Posoltega
The untimely death of Felicita Zeledón, a member of the National Assembly, recalls the tragedy that hit the rural area of Posoltega on the morning of 30 October 1998. Zeledón, then mayor of the small town on the Leon-Chinandega highway, became the central figure in dealing with the biggest humanitarian crisis in Nicaragua since the […]
Addressing fuel poverty in the UK
In 2014 there are estimated to be 2.3 million households living in fuel poverty in the UK 1 – and more than 3 million families 2 are likely to cut back on food this winter to pay their fuel bills. Housing has a huge role to play in improving those statistics. By far the biggest […]
When mining firms sue
Last week a fracking company was refused permission to drill in the South Downs National Park. Celtique Energie is considering an appeal to Eric Pickles to overrule the decision. He might be reluctant to cause a furore in West Sussex, but would he feel the same if aggrieved companies could sue the government for lost […]
Network Rail: back to a public future?
Network Rail rejoins the public sector today, but for statistical purposes only. Wouldn’t it make sense to follow the example of other countries and take it back properly into public control? Today Britain’s rail infrastructure passes back into public ownership: not through any political intent but solely because the Office for National Statistics decided it […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on